Orchard People

[00:00:00] Introduction to Ontario's Peach Season
Susan: Summer is peach season here in Ontario and farmers' markets across the province sell a handful of different peach cultivars that consumers can enjoy.
Juicy and sweet Redhaven peaches are really popular. I also really like Babygold peaches, and they have really firm flesh and they're delicious. You can also find white fleshed peaches that are super sweet and tasty as well. But the selection of peach varieties that we can buy today are relatively limited.
When you consider that there is over a thousand different varieties of peaches in the world, and many of them are heirloom peaches that were grown 50, 80, or even a hundred years ago. Each type of peach will have a different flavor or texture and a different history.
[00:00:54] Exploring Historic Peach Cultivars
Susan: So today we're going to talk about historic peach cultivars that you can grow in your own yard.
And my guest on the show today is Lawton Pearson of Pearson Farm in Fort Valley, Georgia. His ancestors have been growing peaches in Georgia, literally for generations, and the Pearson family has seen countless peach cultivars surge in popularity and then disappear as new varieties emerge. But Lawton, he's a sentimental type. So he has his own private orchard with lots of historic fruit cultivars that he enjoyed in his youth.
Before we dig into today's interview, I would love to hear from you. What's your favorite peach cultivar? Do you grow peaches in your garden? And what is it that you love about this fantastic fruit? I look forward to hearing from you.
[00:01:50] Interview with Lawton Pearson
Susan: So Lawton, welcome to the show today.
Lawton: Thank you for having me.
Susan: We are so glad to have you here today, especially with your incredible history in growing fruit trees. So tell me a little bit about your family. When did they start growing fruit trees?
Lawton: my great-great-grandfather, moved to this area in 1885 and he did a lot of different things, but one of the things he did was, plant peach trees along with a lot of other people at that time.
And, we've really been here ever since, doing the same thing on pretty much the same dirt. We have, whatever that is, a hundred and almost 140, 50 years of history growing peaches in middle Georgia.
[00:02:36] The Origins of Georgia's Peach Industry
Susan: Now, it's incredible because in the old days, in the 1880s, what kinds of cultivars would your ancestors have grown?
Lawton: They probably, when we go back that far, we don't have a whole lot of written records. I've got a lot of records from the thirties, forties, so I know what peaches they grew then. But back then, there were really three peaches that started the whole deal and started the commercial peach industry in Georgia, which spread obviously everywhere else.
It, of course, was the Elberta, which was crossed or it was actually open pollinated in 1889. Before that, the original peach was a Georgia Belle or Belle of Georgia, which is a white meat peach. That was, its date of origin is 1875. So those two, and then the Hiley, which was 1886, those were the three main cultivars of the late 1800s, early 1900s, kind of got this whole show started.
Susan: So you say you got the whole show started. Now, at that time, your family first planted their very first peach trees. Georgia wasn't necessarily known as the Peach State.
Lawton: Not commercially. Georgia got the name Peach State because, back when the Spanish came over, there was peach trees all over the coast because they brought 'em with 'em back in 16 and 1700s.
So when the English got here, they saw a bunch of peach trees along the coast. So it got that name then. But it really became the state nickname when late 1800s, 1880s.
[00:04:14] The Evolution of Peach Varieties
Lawton: A guy in Marshville, which is about 20 miles from here, developed not only a peach in the Elberta that could be shipped to New York, was the market they were trying to go to, but it could be shipped, period, and had the variety to do it, then had the rail car where he would stack ice in the front of it with baffles where he could keep the peaches cool. So he figured out how to get a peach from Marshville to New York in good shape. And that's what started, because at the time, in the late 1800s, the story is that he was getting $15 a bushel for Elberta peaches.
And we sell peaches for less than that now, at times. So that was just an incredibly big price in 1880s for peaches. And that kind of started the craze. My great-great-grandfather was one that followed that craze to middle Georgia and started planting peach trees too. It was like a little goal rush in middle Georgia.
Susan: That is incredible. So they realize that peach trees are a way to get wealthy, right? This is a good business and what they're doing is they're going to be shipping them to New York, is that the thing? Just New York state or all over the place?
Lawton: All over, the population centers, the people that could afford $15 bushel peaches.
That was in the big industrial cities like New York, and that was probably as far as they shipped 'em. But, yeah, they obviously they could get 'em New York, they could get 'em to anywhere else on the East Coast anyway. Amazing.
[00:05:48] Listener Questions and Expert Answers
Susan: We got an email here. It's from Joyce. Joyce is listening from Adams, Michigan.
So Joyce says Hello Susan. Love this topic. My question, what is the oldest peach variety in the world today? Wow. Ooh, I don't know. I'd say it's probably Indian Cling, I think. The Georgia Belle is the oldest one that I know of. But Indian Cling has roots all the way back to, later than that.
Lawton: I think it may have been here, in the 16, 1700s. And, they don't really know when that one came out. And it's interesting because before peach trees came here to North America, they were grown for thousands of years, I guess in China. Are there ancient Chinese varieties that are still around?
Susan: Have to be. I was, when we were talking earlier Lawton, I was saying, Hey Lawton, have you been to China? You gotta go to China to taste some of those peaches. That's on my bucket. So we gotta get you on a trip to China, that's for sure. Okay, so the gold rush starts to happen in terms of, Georgia.
[00:07:02] Challenges and Innovations in Peach Cultivation
Susan: Farmers in Georgia decide, okay, we need to plant more and more peach trees.
You said that there were three main cultivars. When did new cultivars start to come in and why did those ones lose popularity? A lot of it is not, It's not eat ability. For a farmer there's a lot more that goes into a peach than just how good it eats, because honestly, the Georgia Belle is one of the best eating peaches you can eat.
Lawton: It's just impossible for you to move it anywhere, even off the tree without bruising it. So as they obviously got more sophisticated and had more interest in making more money in the industry, they began to try to improve peaches. A lot of times it was just luck.
It was finding a sport in an orchard that was better. Usually it's earlier. So what everybody's looking for at that time was to be first to market, to be early to market. So what you see in a lot of old varieties, you'll have the original Hiley, and then you'll have a bunch of different varieties that are called early Hiley and Stark's early Hiley and somebody else's early Hiley.
There's a lot of different mutations that people would find in orchards, and it would be a little bit different fruit, usually earlier ripening, but maybe it had a little different characteristic. So you had that happening as more and more people planted trees and started looking for better qualities, whether that's timing or shippability or eatability.
And then you also had people like the guy who developed the Elberta, who quit growing peaches and started growing peach trees. And so he's looking for new varieties and actively making crosses and breeding peaches to try to get better, newer varieties. And really ever since then, most of the stuff I have that comes out new is in the thirties and forties.
So it's kinda like everybody grew those three or four peaches for 30 or 40 years, and they said, all right, at that point, south Carolina was growing peaches and Alabama was growing. Everybody started growing peaches and we needed to start separating ourselves one way or another. And, so they wanted to extend the season.
Elberta for us is a July peach, so they started getting earlier peaches and earlier peaches to where we are now, which is middle of May, later peaches, to go later and, trying to expand the industry.
Susan: Gotcha. Yeah.
[00:09:30] Modern Peach Varieties and Their Characteristics
Susan: and Elberta was different in terms of shippability, you said? So Elberta tastes okay.
It tastes good, right? Tastes
Lawton: good. It doesn't bruise.
Susan: Is that the thing? It doesn't bruise when you pick it off the tree. Yeah,
Lawton: so Georgia Belle and Hiley were white meat peaches with very little color. And Elberta was a yellow peach, and it was just firmer than all the other peaches firmer than Indian Clean, firmer than obviously the Hiley and Elberta.
So that allowed you to handle it, which means get it picked, get it packed. A rail car is probably a really bumpy ride, and something as perishable and delicate as a peach, having firmer peaches that are ripe, not green firm. All peaches are firm when they're unripe. But getting ripe but firm was a huge thing to build the industry because it's allowed us to get it shipped.
So the Elberta, first of all, it was yellow, which was not the overwhelming peach at the time. Most peaches were white, most peaches in yards. Most peaches, the Spanish brought over. There were all white peaches, and most of the peaches in China are white. White fleshed. but the Elberta kind of started the move towards the yellow meat peaches because they don't show bruises, they don't bruises as easily. They're just a little hardier peach.
Susan: Interesting.
Okay, so we've got a couple of emails here. One is from Stewart. Hi Susan. Love Georgia peaches. But more importantly, I love a beautiful Georgia peach. If you get my drift. Thanks. From NYC. I'm sorry, I don't get the drift. I don't get jokes sometimes.
Lawton: The moniker down here is, beautiful young ladies or Georgia peaches. Oh, I get it. So he loves the ladies, that's the thing. That's very nice. Okay. Thank you for getting me in on the joke. I love jokes. I love it when my listeners send me jokes though.
Susan: Okay, now we have an email from Leslie. Let's see where Leslie is from. This is Leslie up in Ellijay in the North Georgia Mountains.
[00:11:30] Cold Hardy Peach Cultivars
Susan: We are located at the foot of the Appalachian range zone 6b and found the hard way that our late spring frost make it almost impossible to grow stone fruit trees in a conventional way. We are thinking of grafting late blooming cultivars on dwarfing rootstock as smaller espalier fans, so we can better protect the smaller trees from the few late frosts.
I'd love to know Lawton's thoughts and suggestions on cold hardy cultivars. Wow, Leslie, thank you. Great question. And there's lots in there. That is a great question and it's something that we think about all the time because, as y'all know with peaches, frost is the thing that dominates my year. Whether or not we have one and how bad it is. There are a couple of peaches that we have experienced with down here that are incredibly hardy.
Lawton: The old, super hardy peaches, would be Norman, it's a Redhaven ripening time. And there's some North Carolina peaches like Biscoe that are very cold hardy, and a lot of New Jersey peaches that are cold hardy and obviously Michigan peaches are the Haven Series, Redhaven and Cresthaven.
All those peaches historically are cold hardy. But our best peach, and this is in Georgia, we don't get the chill that they do in Michigan or New Jersey or even North Carolina. And Ellijay will get more than I get 'cause I'm in the middle of state and Ellijay's up north. But we have a peach called Julyprince that was released probably 20 years ago from Byron.
And it is a really late bloomer. It's probably one of the best peaches we grow and it is really tough. Don't know why, but Julyprince and Scarletprince are both delicious July peaches for us that are incredibly tolerant of frost for one reason or another.
If I had to plant something in a, we call 'em in holes. So you have geography, the lay of the land and the colder spots would be the lower spots in a field, but also in a county. So our lower colder spots, that's what we plant is Julyprince, because it blooms late and down here, won't bloom until sometimes almost April, and it'll make a crop even through a frost. That would be my suggestion.
Susan: And is Julyprince a modern cultivar? It is. That's popped up recently. Yeah, it
Lawton: is. It actually is an odd one. The breeding stock for peaches now, a lot of it came from O'Henry, which is an heirloom type variety now from California that has a lot of color. It's delicious. It's got a lot of good qualities, but its disease resistance is not one of 'em.
Julyprince actually came from a Chinese peach, I think I'm right on this, that is completely different than all the other peaches we're growing right now, because it's got a true Chinese peach in its parentage and it probably was released in 2005 or six. So it's, that's relatively new. The way that it works with the USDA program that released it is, it was probably crossed back in the nineties, but it takes a while for that to work through the system and actually get released. So it's been commercially grown in Georgia for about 20 years now.
Susan: And it's an interesting idea that Leslie mentions of growing it small. So basically she's thinking of growing it as an espalier, so up against a fence and keeping it small. So that means that if you need to build a little something or throw a little tarp on top of it on a frosty night to protect your peaches or the blossoms, then you can do that.
So that's an interesting idea. Yeah,
Lawton: great idea.
Susan: And yeah, it's a great idea. Or even if you don't wanna do espalier and you just want to prune your fruit tree correctly to keep it nice and compact. Fabulous idea. Wow. Fantastic.
So we've got Elberta.
Now, you mentioned the other one that you mentioned that seems to be a historical cultivar that really changed everything.
What was it though? The California, was it O'Keefe? O'Henry. O'Henry. Tell me about O'Henry.
[00:15:58] The Impact of O'Henry and Red Peaches
Susan: How did O'Henry change everything? What were peaches like before O'Henry and what were they like after?
Lawton: It's color, and O'Henry's not alone. And there are a lot of peaches that came out of California breeding programs that are unbelievable fruit that, it changed the way a peach is defined in our opinion. Back in the thirties, forties, fifties, even the sixties before California became such a big producing state, our peaches were not red. They were yellow visually. They were yellow skinned with a blush. They'd have 15 or 20% red on it, and there's a lot of varieties that, Elberta's like that. Elberta has very little blush on it, at least in middle Georgia. As you move north, peaches tend to get more color on 'em. But O'Henry is a fully colored late season peach, which means it is completely red. When, that kind of came out, it has really good storage qualities, shipping qualities, and it doesn't bruise or show bruising near like a yellow peach does.
When everybody saw what you could do, and it's shrinking in a grocery store but also in fruit stands and everywhere else, is that this peach is a tougher peach, and even if it is bruised, you can't see it. That changed the idea and as they grew more and more of them, it changed the consumers' perspective for a while anyway, that red is ripe and it's not in a peach. And I think we're seeing now, that people understanding that red does not mean ripe, and that varieties are different, but most people don't understand there are multiple varieties of peaches. They don't understand they're all different and that you can't get 'em all year.
And there's so many varieties of peaches versus, commercially available, versus an apple. I have an attraction affinity for one particular brand of apple and I can get it near about year round. And O'Henry you can get for about two weeks from Georgia. So it's confusing when you add that many varieties to it and what they've, what we did as an industry is you just moved to red peaches all year, and O'Henry was one of those, and it came out in 1970, so it's not that old, but that's about when the move started from yellow to fully colored red peaches.
Susan: I've seen a picture of the Georgia Belle peach. And in the picture, man, that thing is not even white. It's green.
Lawton: It's pale green. Yeah. And it's, it'll be green on the outside when it's firm. When it ripens, it turns really white on the outside and inside. But yeah, the old drawings of Elberta's and highlights there, they look like that.
They look like a oblong green football with a little dash of red on it. And, over the last a hundred years, we've changed the definition of peach from that to a round red basketball. And they're all good things. The peaches now are bigger and some of 'em are sweeter. Some of 'em, the genetic variability in peaches, it's just immense. And we barely tapped the surface of what's possible in a peach.
Susan: So here we have a question from Carl. Carl asks a very important question, hi, Susan. Help. We need peach trees here in Anchorage, Alaska. Any chance of any varieties that can be grown here?
Lawton: That's, I don't know, I guess Anchorage is on the coast. There's a chance that it's not as cold there. There's some Ontario growers that would know. I'm
Susan: just thinking in terms of the only thing that came to mind right away is Reliance Peach. Yeah. Which is, it says here, zones four to eight, but I don't know if Anchorage is zone four.
Lawton: I don't know what zone that is, but Yes, I know when. Yeah, for Anchorage and really, Canadian growers even it comes down into Ohio. What they deal with is winter kill when it gets below negative 20, and negative 10, it'll kill the tree, which is something I don't, obviously I don't face. So if you could grow the tree without dying, I think that would all depend on the spring but there's certain varieties that are much more like winter tolerant than others.
What usually what I'm talking about with tolerance of cold is flowers and how well they crop through a 28 degree frost, how well they live through a negative 20 degree night in January. I need to call somebody in Ontario and ask them some questions.
Susan: Something else I would love to do a show on, so thanks for asking that question, Carl is I wanna do a show on people who grow fruit trees under cover. So there's certain sort of tents and tubes and stuff that you can grow your fruit trees in that would make it a little warmer for the, they're not heated, but, or they may be heated, I don't know.
Anyways, let's hope I can find a good person to interview on covered fruit trees, 'cause that might be the answer.
[00:21:45] Heirloom Peaches and Listener Comments
Susan: But I have a couple of different interesting comments from growers on Facebook. Sean from Oregon wrote, I used to grow Elberta on my farm. So Sean says All peach varieties prior to Elberta were soft fleshed, and hard to ship.
Elberta changed all that, but it's been replaced for many reasons. And this is what Sean says. If people are thinking of growing Elberta, Elberta falls off the tree often before it's ripe. It doesn't color well or sweeten up very well, but it is very productive and reliable with great flesh, texture, and good flavor if you're not looking for sweet. With regards to other historic peach cultivar, Sean says, Redhaven is still planted commercially, though less and less, and I grow Indian Blood Peach. I don't know if Sean is marketing it, but he's coming up with interesting points about why maybe Elberta isn't the great heirloom peach for people to plant in their backyard.
What would you say Lawton?
Lawton: It is funny, Elberta was a great peach because of its strength. And I think he's exactly right. It's not my favorite peach to eat at all. The word that most people used to describe Elberta as astringent. It's got a lot of acid and it's good.
It is, it's not bad, but there's a lot of stuff that's better in terms of just eating a peach or putting in a pie or doing something else with it. So the Elberta's hung on in Georgia because people still ask for it. And, they still, back in the thirties, forties, fifties, this was how people got to the beach.
People from Michigan all the way up, they came through middle Georgia to go to the beach, and they picked up peaches and what they picked up was Elbertas. So we're now in the two or three generations past that. And my mama liked Elberta's. Well, that's all she knew 'cause they all came through here on July the fourth and got a box of Elbertas and went to the beach.
So it's more of that kind of attraction to Elbertas, is its history and its sentimental attachment to the variety because it was the variety for such a long time, but planting a backyard peach. I wouldn't plant Elberta. There's a whole lot, and if I'm planting a peach in my yard, I don't care what color it is. I want it to be awesome. And, there are better peaches to eat than Elberta, in my opinion. And
Susan: we're gonna, yeah, we're gonna talk about that in a couple of minutes, actually. We wanna know your favorites. But first, one other quick comment from Facebook. Scott from Baltimore writes, I've grown many heirloom peaches over the years.
They tend to be less productive, less nice looking and later ripening than most modern ones. A few I have saved include Foster, St. John, Indian Cling, Rochester, Heath Cling. Now, Scott suggests we check out the online book called Peaches of New York by U.P. Hedrick, H-E-D-R-I-C-K.
[00:24:54] Discovering 'Peaches of New York'
Susan: So everybody who's listening now, you gotta go, Google that book, Peaches of New York.
It is fantastic. It outlines all sorts of historic varieties that you can grow in New York State, but all over North America. So I found it. It's lovely. It's a really great little old book. So Lawton, any comments about Scott's favorites Foster, St. John Indian Cling, Rochester, any of those?
Lawton: Honestly, that's peaches of New York. I've never heard of any of one, but the Indian Cling.
[00:25:25] Challenges of Growing Peaches in Different Climates
Lawton: And, that's a really good point that, just because a peach performed well for me, doesn't mean it's gonna perform well in New York or New Jersey. It's a very temperamental fruit and it doesn't even look the same everywhere, and that's because of winters are different and springs are different. That's got a lot to do with it. And there are probably heirloom peaches unique to each location, all over the, at least the eastern half of this country. And they're probably all, they're all unique. They're all wonderful in their own way, but finding an heirloom peach that works really well in middle Georgia doesn't necessarily translate to New York.
Susan: It's interesting 'cause in the course, one of my online courses is called Certificate in Fruit Tree Care. And in the first part of the course, I spend two hours, there's a two hour unit where I teach people how to choose a fruit tree that will thrive in their unique conditions and location. Because when I started my orchard, way back in 2009, my research was getting books out at the library.
And so I go to the garden centers and I say, oh I want this peach, or I want this plum, I want this apple. And they say, lady, we don't carry those. I don't know, maybe they grow in California, but I had no idea. So it is really important as you're collecting your information to learn to research your fruit trees so that you get just the right thing for your yard.
But yes, we're gonna talk more about, I really wanna talk to you about your personal peach orchard with all the historic varieties.
[00:27:08] Lawton's Personal Peach Orchard
Susan: So Lawton, tell me a little bit about your own orchard and when did you plant it and what kind of trees did you want to plant there?
Lawton: I'm like you. I love having a lot of different stuff, right? A lot of different genetics. I love it personally just 'cause I'm invested in it, but I love to eat different kinds of food, and we don't grow, pack, and ship all of it. So I've always had a little bit of an heirloom thing.
I've got scattered trees here and there mixed in with different varieties. Some of it is nostalgic and some of it is because, as I've grown, we're growing some stuff directly for our retail market that people love and enjoy. And so there's more in it than just what I like to eat.
So I've had a bunch of them, and these are all small little blocks with a couple of five trees of this and five trees of that I want selfishly just for me. But as we've moved on and you start growing, some of the blocks, the experimental type blocks have grown themselves into bigger blocks to meet demand for this stuff, if we can figure out how to get it to 'em.
[00:28:27] Historic Peach Varieties and Their Preservation
Lawton: So I planted my house, I planted 'em all over the farm in different places, but most of the stuff, my heirloom, my what I think of as nostalgic heirloom peaches, most of that is stuff that was grown commercially when I was a child in the eighties. Which means most of that stuff was crossed or bred in the forties, fifties, sixties and seventies.
Elberta and Georgia Belle are really the only two that go way, way back. Those are the only two I don't know that you could find a Hiley tree. Now it's probably died, and that's one of the things that I hate. Once some of these old varieties, if somebody's not keeping a tree alive, it'll vanish. There's no, we don't have peaches what they have in apples, where they've got huge repositories of genetic material and can find these apple trees scattered among the countryside. Peach trees die pretty quickly down here, relative to apples and a lot of other things.
So it's gonna die, and if we don't keep propagating it, the variety dies with it. Some of this is, I've got one or two varieties that I'm keeping alive, for nostalgia, for history's reason, historical reasons. One of those is called the Pearson-Berta, and that's a peach that my great-grandfather found.
It comes off about two weeks earlier and I still grow it and love it, and it's one of my favorite peaches to eat. But it is really difficult to ship it and, get it picked right, because it gets soft really easily. So that
Susan: would be, for you, that's really meaningful considering that is a peach with your family name on it.
Lawton: That's right.
Susan: So if you don't save it, nobody's gonna save it. Your kids aren't gonna have it.
Lawton: There's no reason to save it if your name isn't Pearson. It's not exactly,
Susan: except I'm sure it tastes good. I just, I'm going to interrupt you for a second.
[00:30:25] Listener Questions and Peach Growing Tips
Susan: We've got an email here from Tim. Tim says, hello, Susan. Happy Peach season. Thank you, Tim. I think that's a wonderful thing to say. Anyways, he says, Happy Peach season. Love peaches. Very interesting topic today. I'm listening to you from Washington, DC enjoying the show. And I just wanna say to you, Tim, I really think of this. I live in Ontario.
Peach season is very important to me. I think it is. Peaches and cherries are my favorite fruits, though I love apples too. And so I think we should all celebrate peach season and say Happy Peach season to each other upon greeting each other everywhere, the park, the supermarket. So Happy Peach season. Yes.
Oh, so you said, what are some of the other ones? I know that you had mentioned to me Southland was another one of your favorites. Yeah. Tell me why you like that one.
Lawton: Most of the reasons I like peaches is 'cause of how they eat. I have an attachment to the peach with, yeah, growing it and memories of growing up in a Southland orchard.
But really, it's, I really like to eat 'em, and so Southland, it's in my variety block. It came out in 1946, and it came out of Fort Valley. So it's a good peach. It's a yellow peach, and we still pick, pack, and ship it. You can get some Southland from me, for a couple weeks anyway.
But it's a good one to me to eat. It's one of our favorite peaches to eat.
Susan: Is it the flavor, is it the juiciness, is it the juice that drips off your face when you eat it and the sticky face afterwards?
Lawton: Yeah, you can get sticky out of a lot of peaches, but there's something about the Red Globe, which is a great, it's a Maryland peach.
It came out in the fifties, Summer Gold, Southland, Loring, Redhaven's kind of this way. Those peaches that, for us, come off just say the last week of June through the third week of July. There's something about those peaches that has the right balance of sugar and acid. It's not overly sugar, it's not overly acid, but it, together, it's just magic when it's ripe. And it ripens well, like it doesn't melt in a hurry. It's easy to pick it, watch it two days, and when you bite in the thing, it's just an experience that's not, it's not, it's the flavor, but it's also the texture. It's the fuzz. All these peaches were, high long fuzz peaches and they're really fuzzy.
New peaches, newer varieties are all bred to be short fuzz. They call it pubescence. So you pick an O'Henry or any, really, a lot of the peach we're growing now, they don't have a whole lot of fuzz on 'em. But a Red Globe down here when it gets hot and dry is just it's like a wool sweater.
Oh, that's great. It's awesome. If you like the way a peach is supposed to be the way it was originally. That
Susan: is so funny. It's funny because, like I'm not a big fan of nectarines. As soon as you take away that fuzz, I don't know what it is about it. It's just so yummy and delicious.
Yeah. Wow. We got another email here. This one's from Stephanie. Hi, this is Stephanie from Lenexa, Kansas. I just purchased about four acres and I'm hoping to add fruit trees. Your show is very helpful. Hey, so Kansas, can you grow peach trees in Kansas? Wonder if that's a good bet for Stephanie.
Lawton: Yeah, they grow a bunch of 'em in Missouri. A lot of that, again, if you have a way to protect 'em. Obviously Kansas winters I'm sure can be really cold, but I would think that winter kill wouldn't be an issue like it is in Ontario and further north. So it always comes down to spring and spring temperatures and whether or not your area is prone to a late frost. Because peaches, unfortunately, they bloom before they leaf out. The first thing they do is bloom and hang out there, and it doesn't take much to kill a peach when it's blooming. So elevation's right, the right obviously zone, would work, but also if you have a building or a shed, something to put against to protect it. You can grow a peach tree anywhere. Growing the fruit itself sometimes gets challenging. That's the challenging part.
Susan: Yeah, okay.
So back to your favorite cultivars. I also want to comment, you guys shared a fabulous picture. I think it was your aunt maybe, or a great aunt, selling at a market stand with yeah, I think the kids, yeah. What kind of peaches would they have been selling at that market stand? And that looks like what it was the fifties maybe?
Lawton: Yeah, that was in 1950. Probably 55. My dad, I think was six in that picture, and that's, I still have a peach orchard in that same spot. But that probably was a Hiley or an Elberta was still going strong there. But they had a peach that my great-grandfather, they call him Papa John, that he found called the Pearson Hiley. And it was patented. And it was a white peach that came off about two weeks earlier than Hiley. As always, earlier is better. And they made a bunch of 'em and wouldn't let anybody else have it. And everybody got mad at him 'cause they had this, the golden goose, and the Pearson Hiley. But apparently it was inedible. It just had no sugar in it whatsoever. So it died rightfully because it didn't have any sugar in it, but it could have been any of those back in the fifties that they were selling. But back then, a lot of volume was in Hileys and Elbertas.
Susan: We have a question from James. Actually, I've wondered this myself. James writes, hello Susan. Is it advisable to refrigerate peaches that we buy in our supermarkets? Thanks.
Lawton: Nope.
Susan: Never. Never.
Lawton: Well, if you wanna eat 'em in a month, there's no way to avoid it. But peaches don't, once they come to temperature and you buy 'em in the market, the best way to ripen 'em is on your kitchen counter. If you wanna speed it up, you put 'em in a brown bag and that keeps the ethylene around the peach, it accelerates the ripening process.
But the best way to ripen a peach is on your counter.
Susan: Interesting.
[00:37:14] The Art and Labor of Peach Farming
Susan: Now, we were talking before about growing peaches in Georgia. I don't know if I'm allowed to share what you said about what you gotta be, if you're gonna grow peaches in Georgia. Do you remember what you said to me?
Lawton: You gotta be, you gotta be, I forget my dad's word.
He says you've gotta be stupid, essentially. You either have to, he actually says it's either gotta be fun or profitable, and when people ask him why we're the only ones left growing peaches, and he'll say, we're the only ones too dumb not to have gotten out of it.
Susan: And what is the challenge here? You are living in the peach state, and why is it so challenging?
Lawton: It's challenging on a lot of different levels. Labor is always a challenge and peaches are labor intensive. Unlike a lot of other crops that have been able to mechanize a peach is just unique. We pick a tree seven to eight different times over two weeks.
It's the human eye that is, that's judging ripeness and when to pick a peach. And the way a peach tree grows, I think if, when, and I'm sure it'll happen one day, but when we're more intensive and can place peaches where we want 'em on the tree, you'll be able to get a robot to do it. But it's just, it's really hard to teach the art, if that's the right word, of picking peaches to a machine.
So labor is, has always been the downfall and the big barrier to entry of the peach business because it requires a lot of people to pick peaches and to pack 'em. And then, if you were guaranteed a crop, and California doesn't have the same kind of weather challenges we have, they have their own, and I wouldn't trade mine for theirs. But making a crop is difficult. We've had years where, you know, and it's just part of it in Georgia and probably everywhere.
But in 1955, my grandfather picked two peaches on the whole farm. He picked two peaches. 1996 we had 7% of a crop. In 2007, we had 10% of a crop. 2017 we had 20% of the crop.
It's the peach's unpredictability that makes it really difficult one year to the next. I don't know that I'm gonna have a peach to sell next year right now. There's no way around it. And I do all I can and we have frost protection but there's so many things have to line up for you to make a peach.
You gotta have enough winter and the right kind of winter and it can't get warm during the winter. And then you gotta have the right kind of spring and it's gotta be the right kind of spring and not too warm. And you add it all up and you just go, my word, you gotta be stupid to try to do this, which is what my dad said.
Susan: Which is what your dad says. You gotta be stupid to grow peaches in Georgia. Yeah.
It was something else that you had mentioned is you talk about having a diverse portfolio when it comes to peaches. So how many different cultivars do you guys commercially now grow and sell?
Lawton: We are around 45 that you would say are commercial varieties that are, we pick and pack in volume, and that's no more than five or six in any one day, or any one week.
But we, our season runs from about middle of May until the middle of August. And most varieties pick over the span of 10 days to two weeks. And so you overlap 'em all and they're, like I said, they're all different. They're all have their own little eccentricities. And so it's really good to guarantee. What I need, it's volume, to keep everybody here and keep customers happy. And I need as much fruit as I can make.
And if I put all my eggs in one basket, if I had one variety per ripening time, I would have a lot of eggs in one basket and it could get killed because they all bloom a little different.
And any given year, why does one peach make it and the other peach doesn't? No idea, It's because a freeze hit on Tuesday night instead of Wednesday night. That can make a big difference.
So you also would have gaps where you're ending the pick on one variety, and the other variety hadn't started yet. So you've got four or five days in there with no fruit. So what we try to do is layer varieties where we're picking a steady volume all summer. And it makes everything a lot easier when everything makes, but it also makes it just like your stock portfolio. When something goes down, hopefully, something else will have a good year.
And you just see that time and time again where I wish I knew why, but the combination of winter and spring and sometimes, late spring and summer weather, they all respond a little differently to the same set of environmental circumstances.
Susan: What about the next generation? Do you think they're gonna be also growing peaches in Georgia?
Lawton: I hope so, but my next generation right now is 13, so it's a little too early for me to put any pressure on them. But I hope so. I hope it's a viable business going forward because I would do it if I wasn't getting paid. This is what I wanna do with my time. So I hope they want to, but they may not.
Susan: Okay.
[00:42:54] Choosing the Best Heirloom Peach Varieties
Susan: So lots of people are listening today and they're gonna be like, okay, if I'm gonna go for an heirloom, let's say that they're in a climate where they can grow the kind of trees that you grow. If you could pick just one or two of your heirloom or older peach trees, which would you tell them to grow?
Lawton: Oh, that's such a great question. I, for, me in the southeast, for an heirloom peach, I would grow Red Globe and Dixieland. Those two are July peaches, and to eat 'em is just phenomenal. They're very reliable croppers. They are yellow peaches and what I think of as an old school peach. Both of those are fantastic.
As you move up north. The Redhaven and Cresthaven they're just the best, if you can get enough chill for 'em. And those peaches came out of the Michigan breeding program, probably, I don't know, sixties, something like that.
In the Southeast, to me it's hard to beat a Red Globe to eat it.
And it is telling that nobody grows it anymore.
Susan: Because? Color. Interesting. Isn't it interesting how we eat with our eyes as well as our taste buds. Definitely
Lawton: It is. It's also telling that when people eat a Red Globe or a Summer Gold is another one, just as good as a Red Globe.
Their eyes don't matter anymore. You know. Your mouth, once you've tasted it.
Susan: Yeah. You're a convert. Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I'd love to have the opportunity at some point we gotta go take a little trip to Georgia, taste the huge variety that you have because as I said in the introduction, we have beautiful peaches here on Ontario, but a very limited selection.
I would like to really be able to have a peach tasting event where I can taste and feel the difference between the different types of fruit. If I had more room in the orchard, I can't grow peaches here, it's not the best climate for it here in Toronto, but I would love to have five different cultivars. That's what I would like to have if I could.
Lawton: You need to come down here about July the 10th, and we can have a party.
Susan: And how many cultivars will we have at our party on July the 10th? On
Lawton: that day? 20. That we can. Okay, guys,
Susan: this is for the listeners. We're all gonna meet at Lawton's house next year, July the 10th, and we're gonna have a peach tasting party.
I'm so excited. That'll be great.
[00:45:44] Wrapping Up and Future Plans
Susan: Okay, I just wanna thank all the amazing listeners that tune into this show live, and the people who listen to the podcast every month. I get wonderful emails from you guys, just all sorts of little emails.
So I want to say hello to some people who emailed me this month, Charlie and Erica wrote in to wish me a happy long weekend. Thank you so much guys. Alan wrote to remind me about the upcoming Toronto Cider Festival, which was important. Somehow that wasn't on my radar. And Ellen wrote to say she can't tune in live today, but she looks forward to downloading the recorded podcast. She said this is right up her alley. So obviously she's interested in growing peaches.
Thanks everybody so much for being part of the Orchard People community.
So thank you so much for everybody who participated. That is wonderful. And Lawton, thank you so much for joining me on the show today. It was lovely to spend some time with you talking peaches. Thank you for having me. This is, this has been a lot of fun for me.
Lawton: I love talking about peaches. All right, if the listeners want to learn more, you guys should head over to the Orchard People YouTube channel, because in the next couple of days I'm going to upload a video version of this podcast. I'll edit it down, put some of Lawton's fabulous pictures in there, and you'll see lots of images of heirloom peach variety, some historic pictures from the Pearson family history, which are fun to look at.
Susan: So come check out Orchard People's YouTube channel. Check it out in a couple of days, or check it out now to see previous shows. And if you are thinking of growing peach trees, make sure you have the right climate and conditions for them to learn more. Check out my online course certificate in Fruit Tree Care, and I will teach you how to grow fruit trees like a pro.
We are so glad that Lawton was on the show today from Pearson Farms, and we're going to wrap up the show.